PESHAWAR: The man accused of rape and murder of Asma, the four-year-old girl from Mardan, has been sent on a 14-day judicial remand after he confessed to the crime in the court of judicial magistrate.

Muhammad Nabi, the accused, was presented before the magistrate on Monday. A friend of the accused also recorded his statement and informed the court that the accused had shared details of the crime with him.

Mardan police arrested 15-year-old Nabi last week after his DNA sample matched with those collected from the site where Asma’s body was discovered. Asma, a resident of Mardan and a relative of Nabi, went missing earlier last month and her body was later found in a sugarcane field.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) police had sent evidences collected from the crime scene to the Punjab Forensics Science Agency (PFSA) which, on February 6, confirmed that the DNA sample of one of the accused matched with the sample collected from the site.

According to the Punjab government, the K-P police had sent 145 DNA samples of the suspects and it took the PGSA 24 days to identify Nabi as the suspected killer.